James Harker’s eyes opened wider. His lower lip dropped.
I went on, “But you didn’t. You knocked Mr. Canby down, and he lay there like he was dead. But he was just pretending. He was hoping you would go away, which you did when the ambulance left. Then he got up. But he never got out of the rubble. A big man came back. He was angry. He accused Mr. Canby of cheating with his wife. Mr. Canby swore he didn’t, but the man wouldn’t listen. He picked up a block of concrete and smashed it against Mr. Canby’s bald head. That knocked him to his knees. Then he smashed him with it again. That broke his skull open.”
James shook his head slowly, robotically. He stammered, “No . . . no.”
“The big guy threw more bricks on his head and on his body, making it look like he’d been crushed to death in the shelter. Then he took off.” I stopped to let my words sink in. “And I think you know who that man was.”
“No! It can’t be.”
I tried to look him in the eye, but he turned away. “A big man,” I said. “A footballer. A good fellow most of the time.”
James Harker could no longer resist my words. He finally croaked, “Bill Lane.”
“That’s right. Bill Lane. He got killed himself the next month, in a fire at Potters Fields.”
James whispered, “Yes. He did.”
“He died before he got up the courage to tell you about that night, didn’t he? So I’m here to tell you now. You never killed anybody. Mr. Canby’s blood is on Bill Lane’s hands, not yours. You’ve been asking God for forgiveness for sixty years for a crime that you did not commit.” I leaned forward. “Mr. Harker, there’s nothing to forgive.”
He looked right at me. All the blood was drained from his face. “Who told you this?”
“I was there. With Jimmy. Your son, Jimmy Harker.” His look demanded more. I added, “A skinny boy. Maybe eight years old. Liked the Gunners, and Vera Lynn. Used Brylcreem. Had a dog named Reg that got put down.”
James Harker’s eyes widened a little more with every fact.
“Jimmy brought me to that spot, on that night, and he made me stay there and watch so that I could tell you here, today.”
All anger was gone now from James Harker, and all suspicion. He simply asked, “Why? Why now, after all these years?”
“Because it’s your time now, Mr. Harker.” I swallowed hard. “So if you are ready to see your son again, I think I can help you do that.”
Mr. Harker’s eyes came into clear focus as I spoke. He nodded his understanding, and his consent. After a few moments, he stood up and took one last look around at the Quire; then he started out.
I walked with him down the length of the nave. I saw Dad sitting in one of the wooden chairs in the back, near the exit. His eyes had a strange, faraway look, too. Was he praying? He sat up at attention as we approached. I said, “This is it, Dad. We’re at a point here. This is why we’ve come.”
James Harker, standing beside me, let his gaze take in the rest of the great cathedral.
Dad struggled to his feet, pushing several of the wooden chairs out of alignment. “What do you need me to do?”
I thought of all the confusion that had filled my life for the past six months. I thought about Nana and her phone calls about a boy named Jimmy. I thought about sleeping in my grandfather’s office next to the radio. And I thought about my own long struggle to comprehend this incomprehensible task. Now I was on the brink of doing it. Now my mind was completely clear. I knew what Dad needed to do, and what James Harker needed to do, and what I needed to do.
I was ready.
I was ready to do my bit.
DAY OF RECKONING
I asked Dad, “Will you go back to the Wayfarer and get the box with the radio? Will you bring it to Mr. Harker’s flat?”
Dad answered with enthusiasm. “Sure, Martin. I’ll do that right away.” He led the three of us through the wooden exit doors and into the sunny day outside. Then he took off at a brisk pace, leaving James Harker and me to wend our way slowly through the streets of the ancient city.
James Harker continued to look around, as if taking everything in one last time. I understood then that he truly believed me. When I thought the moment was right, I interrupted him to ask, “Mr. Harker, when did you first know that I was telling the truth?”
He smiled apologetically. Then he winked. “I suspected it, almost from the first. When you said that Arsenal beat Fulham up at White Horse Lane.”
“Why then?”
“Don’t know. I have been having . . . thoughts lately. Like maybe something was coming, but I didn’t know what. Then you showed up, with your Arsenal Gunners shirt. I said to myself, ‘This could be it.’ ”
“Yeah?”
“That match, that day, was my last happy memory of Jimmy. He liked the Gunners, as you know.”
“And you liked the Spurs.”
“Aye. Still do.” He shook his head sadly. “That day is one that I go back to, over and over, more than any other. We were all laughing. Even the bloody air raid was a laugh that day.” He looked sideways at me. “Those are the days you remember, lad. Have yourself as many of them as you can.”
As we approached his building, the blue door opened and the landlord emerged, dressed in his gray sweats. He announced, “I’ll be round to check the flat tomorrow, Mr. Harker. And every Saturday from now on. I know that you’re smoking in there, and I won’t have it.”
Mr. Harker paid no more attention to him than he had to me back in 1940, when I couldn’t be seen or heard. As the landlord walked slowly away, though, he commented, “He’s always sniffing round here, like a fat bloodhound.”
He stuck his key into the door and turned it. Then he swiveled his head and directed a steely-eyed gaze at me. “You’re absolutely certain you saw Bill Lane do that? You swear to God?”
“I swear to God.”
We entered the small vestibule and started up the stairs. “I had always suspected that there was something goin’ on between Alice Lane and Canby. Them wardens and volunteers and all, they was all having it off. I couldn’t say nothing to Bill, though, unless I knew for certain.”
“Did Bill still work with you after that day? After December twenty-ninth?”
“No. They gave me three days off then to bury my Jimmy. Three bloody days. When I went back to work, he was gone. Another lad was posted with me. I didn’t see Bill at work, and I didn’t see him at home. We was on different shifts entirely.”
We reached the door to flat number two. Mr. Harker opened it and let me in. “But I heard, through talk, that he was acting . . . reckless-like. The other firefighters didn’t want to work with him. He took too many chances. That sort of thing.”
“How did he die?”
“Climbing a ladder. So I heard. He put a ladder up against a warehouse wall over in Potters Fields, like you said, and he climbed up. The wall collapsed, and that was the end of Bill.” He wandered over to the table and closed the book of Bible stories. “I went to his funeral. So did Alice, of course.” He picked up his father’s medals and placed them on top of the book. “Bill was a good man, in his own way. He talked a lot, but he’d stand by you when you needed him. I believe, once he had it all sorted out, that he’d have told me what he done.”
“I believe that, too.”
“He never got the chance to say it, though, did he?”
“No.”
James ran his fingers over Jimmy’s book. “Our paths never crossed again.”
“No.”
“Remember that, lad, if you never remember anything else. We all touch each other’s lives, for better or worse. So say the things that you have to say to people while you still have the chance.”
“Yes, sir.”
James busied himself putting some other personal things in order. I drifted over and looked through the bedroom door. The room had the same faded wallpaper as the living area. Inside, to the right, was an iron cot with a brown wool bedspread. Next to that was a night table with an empty glass on it. On the back wall, I could see a collage of photos. I asked, “Do you mind if I look at the photos?”
“Suit yourself, lad.”
The collage had yellowed over the years, but it still showed great care in the making. There were smiling faces that I recognized and some that I did not, but I could guess who they were. There was Jimmy with a football; there was a younger James, with a pretty woman who had to be Peg, standing in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral; there were older people—probably his and her parents—including a man in uniform wearing three medals; there was even a photo of Bill and Alice Lane in a happier time, posed in front of a hotel door that said savoy.
Beneath the wall collage, James had a two-shelf bookcase. It was filled with titles about World Wars I and II. I bent to look at a row of matching red books—all six volumes of Winston S. Churchill’s
The Second World War.
James came in and joined me. He reached into the bookcase and pulled out the second red volume. Then he held it up to show me the title:
Their Finest Hour.
He spoke without rancor. “Churchill wrote his own history books and made himself the hero. FDR wrote his letters and did the same. But they wasn’t the heroes. My Peg was a hero, and my Jimmy. Anybody who went out in the cold and wet, and faced death, and got nothin’ for it in return, they was the heroes.”
James picked up the empty glass and led me out of the bedroom. His back seemed to be straightening, like a great load was lifting. He deposited the glass in the sink; then he pointed to an old wooden table with a pair of mismatched chairs. “Pull them out for you and your dad to sit on. I’ve got another one over here.” He walked over to a corner where a piece of furniture sat covered by a white sheet, like a squatting ghost. He yanked off the sheet and tossed it to the floor, revealing a chair that I knew well—the Queen Anne wing chair.
I pointed at it. “Jimmy sat in that chair, listening to the radio.”
James was no longer amazed by my revelations. “That’s right. Five-forty-two every night on the BBC. ‘London Calling.’ ”
“You’ve had it all this time?”
“Mostly. I left it with Alice Lane. But once I got a job and a flat, I had it shipped up here.” He sat on it carefully. “Ol’ Alice was glad to be rid of it, I expect. She was about to remarry.”
“To Sergeant Dennis Hennessey.”
“Was that his name? I hope he made more money than Bill, or she’d have made his life a misery.”
“She liked her gin and It.”
“That she did. I was a very lucky man in that regard. My Peg was a treasure. They don’t make many like her.” James’s voice got very low. “We was just kids ourselves when we had Jimmy. But she made a right good mother. She put Jimmy and me before her own self.” A tear rolled down his lined face. “Yeah. I was very lucky there.”
A tinny ring sounded from a rusty little box on the kitchen wall. James whispered, “That’ll be your dad. Or the bloody landlord.” He walked into the kitchen and pressed a button, unlocking the door downstairs.
It was Dad. He carried the box into the flat. He placed it on the small table by the window, carefully sliding the Bible book and the medals to one side.
I said, “I have a piece of furniture to show you, too, Mr. Harker. It’ll go well with your chair.” I slid the Philco 20 Deluxe up out of the box and into view. James’s face broke into a wide smile. “Cor! That’s the one, isn’t it?”
“This was your radio.”
“It’s the very one!”
“When did you last see it?”
“I expect it was the night I brought it back to the Embassy.” James leaned forward and touched its mahogany knobs.
Dad looked confused. He asked me, “But . . . that’s your grandmother’s radio, from Brookline, right?”
“Right.”
Then he asked James, “So how did you get it?”
“I got it from the Embassy’s storeroom. A kind of a lend-lease program.”
“Sorry?”
“My mate pinched it from a Yank.”
I looked at Dad before asking. “Mr. Harker, was the Yank a skinny young man named Martin Mehan?”
“That was his name, yeah. We took off his nameplate, in case we got caught.”
I kept my eyes on Dad. “What do you remember about Martin Mehan?”
James grinned weakly. “All’s I recall about him . . . is that he would set up the big shots with girls.”
“General Lowery, and people like that?”
“Yeah. Him. Joe Kennedy. All of ’em.”
“That’s all he would do?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I ever seen him do. Bill and me called him the ponce.”
Dad and I exchanged a puzzled look.
“Do ya not know that word, Jack?”
“No. Never heard it.”
James looked back and forth between us. “It’s like . . . I don’t mean to be indelicate, Martin, but like . . . a purveyor of women.”
“A pimp?” I suggested.
James winked at me. “There ya go, lad.”
Dad stared back at me until he finally understood. Then he smiled broadly. “I can’t believe it. Not the sainted Martin Mehan?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He emitted a short, dry laugh. “I heard his shrine was closing anyway.”
“That’s right. It never should have opened.”
Dad shook his head back and forth several times. He touched the war medals lightly. Then he took the book of illustrated Bible stories, opened it, and began reading.
James moved closer to the radio, examining its grillwork. He caressed the curve at the top of it like it was a child’s head, and he spoke with great emotion. “Jimmy loved to listen to this. When I’d let him. But I wouldn’t always let him.”
He paused as tears came to his eyes. “You shouldn’t be too hard with little boys. You should treat them as precious, because that’s what they are.” He picked up the medals. “I always told Jimmy not to be afraid—of the bombs, or the Nazis, or the dark. But he was just a little boy. He should have been afraid of those things.”
James looked through the window, into the distance. “I was afraid of those things.” He turned and looked at the bedroom. “I’m only afraid of one thing now.” He asked me, “Tell me, lad, aren’t you afraid of death?”
“No, sir. Not anymore.” I dared to add, “You shouldn’t be, either.”
“No?”
“No.”
“And Jimmy . . . he told you to tell me that he was sorry?”
“That’s right.”
“When I’m the one that needs to be sorry? For all my harsh words? And deeds?”
I couldn’t think of an answer to that.
“Just like his mum, he is.” James nodded thoughtfully for a long moment. Then he pulled his shoulders back, like a soldier. “So then, lad? What do we do first?”
I pointed at the Philco 20. “First you’ll need that.”
“What? The radio?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. That’s how I met Jimmy, every time.”
James’s face registered surprise, just like Jimmy’s face had so often. He put both hands on the radio and tilted it slightly, to see how heavy it was. Then he picked it up, carried it into the bedroom, and set it carefully on the table. I reached into the box, pulled out the adapter, and followed him in. Dad did not move. He continued to read the Bible book like he was transfixed.
James sat on the creaky bed and whispered hoarsely, “Just tell me what to do, exactly, and I’ll do it.”
I knelt down and plugged the adapter into an outlet behind the table. I told him, “The way it worked for me is, I’d tune to a spot between the stations. I’d lie with my eyes looking at the dial and my ear listening to the static. Then . . . it would happen. I’d be with Jimmy.”
James nodded his understanding. “Tune it in for me, will you, then?”
“Yes, sir. All right.” I knelt down again and found a place on the dial that emitted a soft stream of static. I heard it crackling in my ear. I felt the warm glow of the orange dial on my face. I stood back up and looked at James, but words failed me beyond “Goodbye, then, Mr. Harker. Goodbye and good luck.”
He lay down heavily, on his left side, with his head near the radio. “Thank you, lad.”
But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not yet. I finally stammered, “Please, sir, if you think of it, tell him that . . . Johnny did his bit.”
I don’t know if James Harker was still listening or not. He faced the orange dial, with his eyes wide open, and waited. I turned away and hurried out.
Dad was still immersed in the Bible book. He looked up at me with awe in his eyes and in his face, like he was in the presence of a higher power.
I felt the same way. I felt that, for the first time in my life, I had done something great.
I walked to the door and waited there until Dad joined me. Then I led him down the stairs and into the street.
About halfway across, I stopped, turned, and looked back at James Harker’s windows. Was it happening now? Was Jimmy Harker in there, smiling his crooked smile? Was he chattering on about football, and pop songs, and the war news? Or was he now telling his father what to expect on the other side? Was he telling him about the next phase in the journey of his immortal soul?
Dad pulled me back slowly to the far curb to let a van drive by. That’s when I finally allowed myself to look away. I believed that my job was now finished. I believed that the rest was up to God.
But I also believed this: that I, pathetic, basement-dwelling Martin from Princeton Junction, New Jersey, had just served as His messenger.